Review: Mistborn - Brandon Sanderson

Mistborn (The Final Empire) by Brandon Sanderson

Mistborn, book 1

Genre: fantasy
Pages: 643
Published: 2006

For a thousand years the ash fell and no flowers bloomed. For a thousand years the Skaa slaved in misery and lived in fear. For a thousand years the Lord Ruler, the "Sliver of Infinity," reigned with absolute power and ultimate terror, divinely invincible. Then, when hope was so long lost that not even its memory remained, a terribly scarred, heart-broken half-Skaa rediscovered it in the depths of the Lord Ruler's most hellish prison. Kelsier "snapped" and found in himself the powers of a Mistborn. A brilliant thief and natural leader, he turned his talents to the ultimate caper, with the Lord Ruler himself as the mark.

Kelsier recruited the underworld's elite, the smartest and most trustworthy allomancers, each of whom shares one of his many powers, and all of whom relish a high-stakes challenge. Only then does he reveal his ultimate dream, not just the greatest heist in history, but the downfall of the divine despot.

But even with the best criminal crew ever assembled, Kel's plan looks more like the ultimate long shot, until luck brings a ragged girl named Vin into his life. Like him, she's a half-Skaa orphan, but she's lived a much harsher life. Vin has learned to expect betrayal from everyone she meets, and gotten it. She will have to learn to trust, if Kel is to help her master powers of which she never dreamed.

I wanted to try Sanderson ever since I read that he would complete WOT. Now I can see that the style is totally different. And I dunno why but I'd like to call this sci-fi fantasy, yes nothing sci-fi about it except for this feeling I got. That this is not a fantasy world, it could just be a world out there. But that is just me and perhaps it was all the metal magic.

This is the story about Vin, a thief living and hiding in the big city. She is skaa, the slaves of the world. An owner can take a woman and kill her the next day, because the gods forbid if a halfbreed was ever born. Which of course she is. Some get away, but the slave population is tired after 1000 years of slavery. It all started with the man now known as the Lord Ruler, the all mighty god that rule them all with an iron fist. He granted those who supported him 1000 years ago special rights and they are now the nobility, the rest, slaves, all owned by him and to be used by the noble families at their whim.

One day a man comes, Kelsier, with mighty plans to kill the Lord Ruler and bring the Skaa out of slavery. But how can you kill a god? Even if Kelsier is a mistborn, he has magic because of his half blood lineage, just as Vin has. Soon she is thrust into another world and will see if The Lord Ruler is a God, and if his guards are as immortals are the legends say.

I liked Vin, even if she does get a bit stupid later on thinking that the nobility isn't as bad as people have told her. But how could she know about their brutality. In a way she escaped this by being a thief and hiding from everyone. But she has potential.

The rest of the cast is good too, Kelsier with his plans, Sazed with his memory, a certain young Lord we meet, and the rest of the gang.

The magic here is really clever. They use tin, pewter, copper and more for magic gain. By swallowing this or using it otherwise they can run up a building, jump, push people and more. The magic enhances this things and I do like this creation.

Then there is the brutality of the world, in the beginning we see a pretty young girl getting taken away and the rest knows that she will be killed the next morning. They live with that and they wish their daughters to be ugly. They are a beaten people and they haev no hope. Then there is the world, it is covered in ash, the world is grey and brown and surrounded by a mist where dangerous beings live. All this cos of something that happened a 1000 years ago. It is an ugly world.

This was an ok fantasy book, mostly because of how he used the magic and how he should the grim existence of the world. He is a great worldbuilder, that I must say. I have the other two books so I will see how the story plays out.

Blodeuedd's Cover Corner: Nothing to complain about.

Reason for reading: own copy.

Final thoughts and grade: Ok fantasy .. 3

And now to a DNF

It is 1875, and Ann Eliza Young has recently separated from her powerful husband, Brigham Young, prophet and leader of the Mormon Church. Expelled and an outcast, Ann Eliza embarks on a crusade to end polygamy in the United States. A rich account of a family’s polygamous history is revealed, including how a young woman became a plural wife.

Soon after Ann Eliza’s story begins, a second exquisite narrative unfolds–a tale of murder involving a polygamist family in present-day Utah. Jordan Scott, a young man who was thrown out of his fundamentalist sect years earlier, must reenter the world that cast him aside in order to discover the truth behind his father’s death.

It is not that it was bad, the total opposite. I just got to page 200 (of 600) and got a bit bored with it all. I could not focus and wanted to read other books. The first 200 pages were good, well ok 150 but then I lost interested. I am sure I will read it one day, if I remember, because this book also shows a horrible world and I would like to see what happened to everyone. But not today. 400 pages more, yup no.